FREE printable

Leaping rabbits and hares have a real Spring feel about them don’t they? I’ve been doodling them forever, so I thought I’d put them to good use, and couldn’t get the Chas and Dave song out of my head, (and I fancied a denim pocket purse craft) – Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit – exactly what you do when you are on the telephone? Yep – Soooo, I thought, iPhone wallet?

Looking around the house, I came across some old denim jeans in the bag destined for the charity shop, and as we love to upcycle in our house, cut the back pockets off! My quest for a denim pocket purse craft was realised!
Yes? Well I liked it, and so did the kids so I’ve made these for their iPods, using little self-adhesive velcro dots as closings on the inside of the denim pockets, and we’re looking for a use for the little coin denim pocket – ideas welcome? Full instructions below…

Instructions:

Carefully cut the back pockets out of the denim jeans, so that you retain both layers of fabric, thus creating your OWN denim pocket.

Find (and iron) some contrasting fabric to applique onto the denim pocket purse for the rabbit shapes. (I used some fabric I had acquired from ReUsefulUK and my neighbour RedTedArt‘s hubbies old work shirt.

Print off the FREE printable rabbits template, to the scale you require for the three leaping rabbits to fit comfortably on the back pocket (the scale here is for a man’s jeans, so you may find you need to print at 90% for smaller pockets).

I used Spraymount glue to lightly adhere the rabbit sheet to the BACK of the contrasting fabric, (so that when you remove the paper from the reverse of the rabbits, the rabbits will be facing the right way… your choice!)

Peel the paper template from the back of the rabbits. And position on the denim pockets. I used a PVA glue to stick the rabbits onto the denim pocket purse, and gave them a light coat over the top too…

Add your velcro dots to the inside of the pocket to make a secure closure.

These would make FANTASTIC little denim pocket purse bags for mini-eggs for a quick Easter gift too!

So the New Year is upon us again, so apologies for not posting this sooner – so many of you have been asking for a FREE printable calendar – I’ve quickly rustled up one for us, which you can print off for your walls too!

Ours is printed on to alternatively, white, and red paper, and we’ve used a great big cardboard box as the backing, and used a fabulous gilt-printed tape as a ‘frame’ which we found in New York, and have been waiting to use it for ages!

I’ve saved the 12 pages as a printable PDF for you CLICK HERE TO PRINT, with space for meal-planning, and a little ‘bonus point’ reward chart at the bottom – whether for your kids, or yourself – that’s up to you!

So Autumn is upon us, and time to look at a Mexican holiday celebration which is new to my boys: Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos which is the first two days of November.

Although the holiday involves artistic representations of skulls and skeletons, the occasion is festive, rather than morbid. Death isn’t seen as the end of one’s life, but as a natural part of the life cycle; the dead come back to visit every year. In the UK, around this time of year, Halloween’s images of skulls and skellybobs are spooky,eery, and scary. By contrast, On Day of the Dead, it’s about celebrating with the family both alive and remembering those who are no longer with us.

I asked the boys what they would like to make, and ‘masks’ and ‘bunting’ seemed popular and do-able choices… as they are 9 and 10 now, and love their Marvel graphic novels, they wanted me to ‘draw’ the templates in Illustrator for them to colour – so that’s what we’ve done… and I’ve attached a FREE Printable for you to colour and create your own Day of the Dead garland too…(you too can make your own ‘microwave dave’ character like the 10yo…)

Want to see me talking about this project and skull potato printing? Click the link and photo left, to watch via youtube…. Maggy Woodley from Red Ted Art hosted a fabulous “Day of the Dead crafts’ on Google+.

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So, with the school holidays fast approaching, we are all looking for something fun to do, that we haven’t done before…I had a flashback to a game we used to play in the park when we were small, who remembers ‘KICK THE CAN’ or ‘pom-pom-free-all’? (well, that’s we called it back in our day if you didn’t have a can!)

How to play – the basics

Someone is ‘it’, there is a ‘jail’ – and the ‘it’ person has to catch everyone and put them in the jail, and if any one of the players who has not been caught yet, can get to a designated spot (ie, a tree, or in this case a ‘can’) and shout ‘pom-pom-free-all’ as they KICK THE CAN, all of the captors are FREE!!

So, you see, you can play it WITHOUT the bean tin, or can, but I know you like to extend the fun so I’ve made you some FREE printables with a TARGET to kick, which you can, ummm, print off, and glue to your can! Oh, word of advice, the sharp edges of the cans, are, errr, sharp, (I won’t show you the photo of my cut finger) so using my trusty hot-glue gun, I whizzed round the edges to make them a bit more kid-friendly… You could also spray paint the tin, and cover with stickers for smaller children to join in the decoration fun, this ‘spins it out’ a bit, so that you have an inside activity you can do together, before you take it outside to play!

So, as you know, I’m on a weekly panel of crafty So-and-So-s invited to ‘hang-out’ on Google+ by the every lovely Maggy Woodley at Red Ted Art. This week this was hosted by Maggy AND Netmums.

I hung out on Google+ for a bit of a vlog…with some craft buddies to share these holiday fun ideas, hosted by the aforementioned ever lovely Maggy from Red Ted Art who has pulled all of these together in a *Boredom Buster* post. Also present were Anthea with her Kids’ storage shelves and fabulous bird masks, Kelly‘s amazing paper plate dreamcatcher, Liz and her corks, and newbie to crafting, Rosie! Pop back later for more links soon.